Question for Adobe users

Chris Barcellos · July 2nd, 2007, 11:35 AM

I posted this in a thread last year, has anyone tried this:

Edit in HDV time line.

Render to DV, doing a deinterlace.

Take the DV out to your DVD creation software, transcoding there.

In my experience, this is what I got best result with Premiere. I don't know why, but a direct transcode from HDV mpg to SD mpg does not work so well....

Paul Firth · July 6th, 2007, 06:36 AM

Personally, I've found that if you use PP2 with an HDV timeline, and then render (using Adobe Media Encoder) to DV, you get a significant loss in quality. It actually looks kind of blurry. I've tested some renders side by side and you can really see a difference. I get a much better picture by doing one of the following:

I've taken my finished HDV footage/timeline and rendered a full-resolution uncompressed HDV movie (VERY large file). Then I import the file into After Effects, render using best settings and stretch the file in the renderer to 720x480 AVI. You can then import this file into Encore or use Media Encoder to convert it to MPG. You could convert directly in AE to MPG, but for some reason, you can only do 1-pass VBR from AE.

What I usually do now, is create a widescreen DV project (either 60i or 24p) and import my HDV footage into this. I place it on the timeline and shrink it to 45%. Edit away and then use Media Encoder to render MPG or AVI. Pop it into Encore and you're done.

I don't know why this is so much clearer, but it is. Maybe something about PP2 and AE doing sub-pixel resolution and Media Encoder doesn't? If someone else knows, I would love to hear an explanation. But trying both ways side by side shows a big difference. Try it and see what you think. Take a small HDV file, put it in an HDV timeline, then use AME to render to DV. Then take the same HDV file, put it into an SD timeline and render. Render #2 will look much sharper.

Steve Montoto · July 6th, 2007, 08:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maksim Yankovskiy

My workflow in PP2 is somewhat different.

1. Capture XH-A1 footage directly into PP2.
2. Drop the footage on HD timeline.
3. Edit.
4. Render final product in HDV MPEG2 25Mbs.
5. Drop final product on SD timeline.
6. Scale to 45% to fit SD 16:9 and apply "sharpen" filter (30).
7. Render SD timeline to MPEG2-DVD for SD DVD delivery.
8. Encore DVD for SD DVD authoring.
9. Render final HDV MPEG2 25Mbs clip to AVC 12Mbs for HD delivery.

I end up with two products: SD and HD.
In step 9, I use Nero Recode to render final HDV to AVC. This saves 1/2 the space while maintaining the same quality.

On step 5 do you open a regular DV timeline? and do you keep the lower fields first? or how do you handle the fields?

Thanks

Steve

John B. Nelson · July 7th, 2007, 08:48 AM

Being a "new" Adobe Premiere Elements user, I found this thread to be interesting so I thought I would add my 2 cents worth to it....

Up until the time I bought the A1 (which was about 2 months ago) I have been working with SD analog video and using software like Ulead's Videostudio and Arcsoft's Showbiz DVD and have been happy with the results they gave me. However, since getting the A1, I quickly learned that these applications aren't capable in maintaining the quality of video that the A1 produces and that I need to find a new solution for my workflow. Thanks to this forum, I discovered new applications to try out and at the moment have found a suitable workflow. Keep in mind though, my objectives are probably different than many on here so it might not be suitable for you.

My objective is simple: Keeping it as simple as possible. I want to devote my time to being creative and not spend hours trying to figure out how to do a simple editing task. The interface is very important to me. I have spent a lot of money this year on video/photography equipment so my objective includes doing this as cheap as possible. And finally, because I'm stuck using the Vista OS, this workflow has to be compatible with Vista. So with that in mind...

My first challenge was to successfully capture the HD video off the camera so I could edit it. The applications that I had did not do this. I read about HDVSplit on here and got it. It works perfectly. I can't thank the people who are responsible for this great piece of software enough. When I capture I always have the scene detection enabled and it saves the captures in individual files. That way I can just import the scenes that I want to use into the editing software.

My next challenge was to find editing software that is not only easy to use, but has the rendering capabilities to maintain the HD video, as well as giving me a variety of transitions and filters that would meet my needs. I have been a diehard Ulead user for many years so Videostudio was my first choice. I'm sorry to say Videostudio did not make the grade. Version 11 is full of rendering and capturing flaws.. and now that Corel has taken over Ulead's product line, I fear the quality of their software will diminish the same way Paintshop Pro did when Corel took over that.

I read a lot about Sony Vegas on here.. it seems to be very popular among the population so I gave that a try. There is no Vista version yet so I tried it out on my Windows XP "workhorse." I am sorry to say this but as far as editing goes, Vegas is horrible. Unless I'm missing something here, the interface is not user-friendly at all. Just trying to do simple tasks... like setting a transisition or placing a 5 sec black image to fade out on was a major task. Maybe that’s because you only work in a timeline, there is no sceneline to break it down and make things easier when working with many scenes. I read a lot about the advantages of Vegas, like how you can keep/edit a 24fps timeline, but this can be done in Videostudio and Premiere Elements, too. The only good thing I can say about the Vegas Suite is their DVD Architect 4 software.. it is the only DVD authoring software that I found that produces the best video quality when it comes time to burn the final product. Unfortunately you have to buy it in a package, they do not sell it separately.

I ended up using Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 for editing and rendering. The interface is simple and it has everything I need as far as transitions and filters goes. One of the nice features Elements has, it puts a checkmark on the scenes you use in the timeline. That alone is a big plus for me as I can look in the media window and see what scenes I am using. When I'm done editing I render it to an mpeg stream and there is no loss of video quality at all.

From there I will either burn the video on DVD using DVD Architect or use Windows Media Encoder to render the video to a HD WMV file. The DVD plays nicely on a SD television with very little loss in video quality.

I have yet to try outputting the final video to a HD DVD because like a lot of people, I do not own a HD DVD player. They are very expensive right now and it will probably be another a year or more before they become more affordable. It’s for that reason I am not offering this service to my clients, so I need to produce the SD video the best way I know how. So for now my workflow is as follows:

1 - Capture HD video using HDVSplit (scene detection enabled.)
2 - Edit HD video (24 or 30fps) using Premiere Elements 3.0.
3 - Render edited video to m2t mpeg stream using Premiere Elements 3.0.
4 - Output m2t mpeg stream to DVD using Sony’s DVD Architect 4 software, (well at least for the next 24 days, that’s when the trial version expires.)
5 - Output m2t mpeg stream to a HD windows media file to play on computer using Windows Media Encoder.

Because Sony doesn’t sell the DVD Architect software separately, I may have to purchase the Vegas Suite if I can’t find another solution. If I have to though, I will wait until they release the Vista version, and hopefully when they do the new version will be more user friendly.

Well I hope this post will be helpful to some, just wanted to share some of my experiences with you.

Cya,

John

Jack Jenkins · July 7th, 2007, 11:40 PM

I agree, I do not trust PP2 with a re-size or scaling of the footage. In my experience AE does a better job with scaling down footage (more complex math). As far as the Uleads and othe DVD progs, they feel kind of rough and tumble when it comes to compression quality.

Bill Ritter · July 19th, 2007, 09:35 AM

My experience with PP2 with the Matrox RTX2 card has been very good. My workflow is:

1. capture in Matrox HDV.
2. Edit in HDV timeline
3. export using Matrox/Adobe export for 720x480 SD or 1080 HD mpgs
4. For SD mpg import into Encore and make DVD
// for Blu-ray import HD mpgs make BD Disk

Blu-ray disks are incredibly awesome in 1080 on a 1080 screen - clients say it is like being there.

Playing the DVDs made using the NTSC 720x480 widescreen mpgs from PP2 on my 46inch SAMSUNG 4665F LCD HD monitor have been excellent - obviously not 1080 HD footage, but superior to any SD from miniDV camcorder I have put out in the past. As good as SD coming from a cable provider.

I used to export a single avi in my older Matrox system as that would go in real time, then use cinecraft encoder as it produced good results and was quicker than PP2.

Bill in Ohio

Bob Harotunian · July 20th, 2007, 04:41 PM

Bill,
I've been hoping a Matrox user would post. I'm a current RTX100/PP1.5 user. I have a love/hate relatioinship with this combo and was wondering if you find RTX2 stable.

Also, if you don't mind could you outline your computer spec? I'm leaning towards the Dell XPS710/XPPro with Core 2 Extreme and 768MB NVidia GeForce video.
Bob

Bill Ritter · July 30th, 2007, 03:59 PM

The best way to see which combo of moboard and other cards is to go to their site and see the approved list. Otherwise they will not honor support or warranty.

I have
Titan 550 server case
Intel D975BX mobo
Intel core 2 duo E6600 2.4 GHz
2 GB DDR2 667 RAM
WD 320 GB HDD
Three WD 320 HDD as RAID 0
Audigy 4 OEM sound card
GEFORCE 7950GT 512 MB PC-e video card
Pioneer Blu-ray
Win-XP Pro
lots of fans.

If you want to go dual duo core that would be even faster.

For HD, most is in RT, in SD almost anything you can dream of doing in multiple layers of video and graphics is RT. Rendering to final mpgs depends on what you start with. I shoot 1080 and go from there, so renders take a while. The experiments I did in SD just zipped along ultra fast.

I do miss some of the effects (especially particle effects), however in general almost all of my transitions are crossfades. I just love the softer transition that gives over a straight cut in the wedding videos we do.

I would strongly strongly recommend you go to the matrox site. www.matrox.com and review the recommendations they have for both systems that are preconfigured and moboards that allow for custom built.

I have done numerous projects and the only time it seems to have problems is when I do hundreds of jpgs or stills in 2 hour long video and stills mix where I resize and do scales and moves with most of the stills. It does a timeline update and then crashes if you aren't patient. Otherwise it is very stable and I am enjoying the editing.

Bill

July 2nd, 2007, 11:35 AM	#16
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	I posted this in a thread last year, has anyone tried this: Edit in HDV time line. Render to DV, doing a deinterlace. Take the DV out to your DVD creation software, transcoding there. In my experience, this is what I got best result with Premiere. I don't know why, but a direct transcode from HDV mpg to SD mpg does not work so well.... __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

July 6th, 2007, 06:36 AM	#17
Paul Firth Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Elk City, OK Posts: 34	Personally, I've found that if you use PP2 with an HDV timeline, and then render (using Adobe Media Encoder) to DV, you get a significant loss in quality. It actually looks kind of blurry. I've tested some renders side by side and you can really see a difference. I get a much better picture by doing one of the following: I've taken my finished HDV footage/timeline and rendered a full-resolution uncompressed HDV movie (VERY large file). Then I import the file into After Effects, render using best settings and stretch the file in the renderer to 720x480 AVI. You can then import this file into Encore or use Media Encoder to convert it to MPG. You could convert directly in AE to MPG, but for some reason, you can only do 1-pass VBR from AE. What I usually do now, is create a widescreen DV project (either 60i or 24p) and import my HDV footage into this. I place it on the timeline and shrink it to 45%. Edit away and then use Media Encoder to render MPG or AVI. Pop it into Encore and you're done. I don't know why this is so much clearer, but it is. Maybe something about PP2 and AE doing sub-pixel resolution and Media Encoder doesn't? If someone else knows, I would love to hear an explanation. But trying both ways side by side shows a big difference. Try it and see what you think. Take a small HDV file, put it in an HDV timeline, then use AME to render to DV. Then take the same HDV file, put it into an SD timeline and render. Render #2 will look much sharper. Last edited by Paul Firth; July 6th, 2007 at 06:39 AM. Reason: mis-spelling.

July 7th, 2007, 08:48 AM	#19
John B. Nelson Regular Crew Join Date: May 2007 Location: Bradford, PA Posts: 67	Just my 2 cents... Being a "new" Adobe Premiere Elements user, I found this thread to be interesting so I thought I would add my 2 cents worth to it.... Up until the time I bought the A1 (which was about 2 months ago) I have been working with SD analog video and using software like Ulead's Videostudio and Arcsoft's Showbiz DVD and have been happy with the results they gave me. However, since getting the A1, I quickly learned that these applications aren't capable in maintaining the quality of video that the A1 produces and that I need to find a new solution for my workflow. Thanks to this forum, I discovered new applications to try out and at the moment have found a suitable workflow. Keep in mind though, my objectives are probably different than many on here so it might not be suitable for you. My objective is simple: Keeping it as simple as possible. I want to devote my time to being creative and not spend hours trying to figure out how to do a simple editing task. The interface is very important to me. I have spent a lot of money this year on video/photography equipment so my objective includes doing this as cheap as possible. And finally, because I'm stuck using the Vista OS, this workflow has to be compatible with Vista. So with that in mind... My first challenge was to successfully capture the HD video off the camera so I could edit it. The applications that I had did not do this. I read about HDVSplit on here and got it. It works perfectly. I can't thank the people who are responsible for this great piece of software enough. When I capture I always have the scene detection enabled and it saves the captures in individual files. That way I can just import the scenes that I want to use into the editing software. My next challenge was to find editing software that is not only easy to use, but has the rendering capabilities to maintain the HD video, as well as giving me a variety of transitions and filters that would meet my needs. I have been a diehard Ulead user for many years so Videostudio was my first choice. I'm sorry to say Videostudio did not make the grade. Version 11 is full of rendering and capturing flaws.. and now that Corel has taken over Ulead's product line, I fear the quality of their software will diminish the same way Paintshop Pro did when Corel took over that. I read a lot about Sony Vegas on here.. it seems to be very popular among the population so I gave that a try. There is no Vista version yet so I tried it out on my Windows XP "workhorse." I am sorry to say this but as far as editing goes, Vegas is horrible. Unless I'm missing something here, the interface is not user-friendly at all. Just trying to do simple tasks... like setting a transisition or placing a 5 sec black image to fade out on was a major task. Maybe that’s because you only work in a timeline, there is no sceneline to break it down and make things easier when working with many scenes. I read a lot about the advantages of Vegas, like how you can keep/edit a 24fps timeline, but this can be done in Videostudio and Premiere Elements, too. The only good thing I can say about the Vegas Suite is their DVD Architect 4 software.. it is the only DVD authoring software that I found that produces the best video quality when it comes time to burn the final product. Unfortunately you have to buy it in a package, they do not sell it separately. I ended up using Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 for editing and rendering. The interface is simple and it has everything I need as far as transitions and filters goes. One of the nice features Elements has, it puts a checkmark on the scenes you use in the timeline. That alone is a big plus for me as I can look in the media window and see what scenes I am using. When I'm done editing I render it to an mpeg stream and there is no loss of video quality at all. From there I will either burn the video on DVD using DVD Architect or use Windows Media Encoder to render the video to a HD WMV file. The DVD plays nicely on a SD television with very little loss in video quality. I have yet to try outputting the final video to a HD DVD because like a lot of people, I do not own a HD DVD player. They are very expensive right now and it will probably be another a year or more before they become more affordable. It’s for that reason I am not offering this service to my clients, so I need to produce the SD video the best way I know how. So for now my workflow is as follows: 1 - Capture HD video using HDVSplit (scene detection enabled.) 2 - Edit HD video (24 or 30fps) using Premiere Elements 3.0. 3 - Render edited video to m2t mpeg stream using Premiere Elements 3.0. 4 - Output m2t mpeg stream to DVD using Sony’s DVD Architect 4 software, (well at least for the next 24 days, that’s when the trial version expires.) 5 - Output m2t mpeg stream to a HD windows media file to play on computer using Windows Media Encoder. Because Sony doesn’t sell the DVD Architect software separately, I may have to purchase the Vegas Suite if I can’t find another solution. If I have to though, I will wait until they release the Vista version, and hopefully when they do the new version will be more user friendly. Well I hope this post will be helpful to some, just wanted to share some of my experiences with you. Cya, John

July 7th, 2007, 11:40 PM	#20
Jack Jenkins Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 122	I agree, I do not trust PP2 with a re-size or scaling of the footage. In my experience AE does a better job with scaling down footage (more complex math). As far as the Uleads and othe DVD progs, they feel kind of rough and tumble when it comes to compression quality.

July 19th, 2007, 09:35 AM	#21
Bill Ritter Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Beavercreek, OH Posts: 93	My experience with PP2 with the Matrox RTX2 card has been very good. My workflow is: 1. capture in Matrox HDV. 2. Edit in HDV timeline 3. export using Matrox/Adobe export for 720x480 SD or 1080 HD mpgs 4. For SD mpg import into Encore and make DVD // for Blu-ray import HD mpgs make BD Disk Blu-ray disks are incredibly awesome in 1080 on a 1080 screen - clients say it is like being there. Playing the DVDs made using the NTSC 720x480 widescreen mpgs from PP2 on my 46inch SAMSUNG 4665F LCD HD monitor have been excellent - obviously not 1080 HD footage, but superior to any SD from miniDV camcorder I have put out in the past. As good as SD coming from a cable provider. I used to export a single avi in my older Matrox system as that would go in real time, then use cinecraft encoder as it produced good results and was quicker than PP2. Bill in Ohio

July 20th, 2007, 04:41 PM	#22
Bob Harotunian Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Somerville, MA Posts: 360	Bill, I've been hoping a Matrox user would post. I'm a current RTX100/PP1.5 user. I have a love/hate relatioinship with this combo and was wondering if you find RTX2 stable. Also, if you don't mind could you outline your computer spec? I'm leaning towards the Dell XPS710/XPPro with Core 2 Extreme and 768MB NVidia GeForce video. Bob

July 30th, 2007, 03:59 PM	#23
Bill Ritter Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Beavercreek, OH Posts: 93	The best way to see which combo of moboard and other cards is to go to their site and see the approved list. Otherwise they will not honor support or warranty. I have Titan 550 server case Intel D975BX mobo Intel core 2 duo E6600 2.4 GHz 2 GB DDR2 667 RAM WD 320 GB HDD Three WD 320 HDD as RAID 0 Audigy 4 OEM sound card GEFORCE 7950GT 512 MB PC-e video card Pioneer Blu-ray Win-XP Pro lots of fans. If you want to go dual duo core that would be even faster. For HD, most is in RT, in SD almost anything you can dream of doing in multiple layers of video and graphics is RT. Rendering to final mpgs depends on what you start with. I shoot 1080 and go from there, so renders take a while. The experiments I did in SD just zipped along ultra fast. I do miss some of the effects (especially particle effects), however in general almost all of my transitions are crossfades. I just love the softer transition that gives over a straight cut in the wedding videos we do. I would strongly strongly recommend you go to the matrox site. www.matrox.com and review the recommendations they have for both systems that are preconfigured and moboards that allow for custom built. I have done numerous projects and the only time it seems to have problems is when I do hundreds of jpgs or stills in 2 hour long video and stills mix where I resize and do scales and moves with most of the stills. It does a timeline update and then crashes if you aren't patient. Otherwise it is very stable and I am enjoying the editing. Bill